PROVO -- Officially, Dixon Holmes and Roger Gonzalez are zoning enforcement officers.
But in this city that is increasingly concerned about how it smells, the duo's job duties are on the verge of expanding.Led by their noses, Gonzalez and Holmes are part of a small but elite fraternity responsible for determining what is putrid in Provo. They are two of the five members of Provo's new "Stink Police" -- its super sniffers du jour.
"I wouldn't say it's one of the more favorable things to do," Gonzalez said.
That Gonzalez, Holmes and the rest of a select bunch must now referee scents throughout the city was born of necessity and, city officials say, last resort.
Hundreds of callers, particularly residents in the Maeser, Provost and Spring Creek areas, lit up phone lines at city offices last year complaining of potent foul odors in the city's air.
An estimated 340 of those complaints blamed John Kuhni & Sons Inc., a rendering plant in southeast Provo where millions of pounds of dead animal carcasses are burned annually.
Some callers said the stench was so profuse it made them ill, forced them to leave work early or abandon play at a local golf course.
Since Provo passed a strict new law in July, beginning next month Kuhni's could be cited for violations, fined or even have its license revoked if it commits more than six odor infractions during a one-year period.
The final verdict on whether Kuhni's has violated the smell test will rest within the nostrils of the city's five zoning officers.
"It's not just, 'Can we smell them?' " Holmes said of the odor threshold for citation. "It's, 'Is this just really rank?' "
Exclusively male, the super sniffers are generally low-key, casually dressed sorts who wear jeans or khakis with tennis shoes on the job.
They will usually be dispatched in teams of two to gauge odors after a complaint has been made by a local resident or business.
Empty-handed, the odor investigators bring with them no special equipment and no high-tech devices to measure odor particulates in the air.
Once they arrive on a scene, they put the windows down or get out of the car, inhale the air and await whatever sensation follows. During a recent smelling survey of a southeast Provo neighborhood, Holmes and Gonzalez demonstrated the technique, otherwise known as breathing.
"I'm smellin' a little Pacific States (Co.) right now," Holmes observed.
"Yeah, a little more metallic, industrial smell," Gonzalez added.
According to Holmes and Gonzalez a handful of culprits accounts for almost all of Provo's funkiest odors: Kuhni's; the city's own water sewage treatment plant and compost yard; Pacific States (which sells tiles and pipes) and Reilly Tar and Chemical Co.
Each of these businesses can be found in the East Bay corridor of southeast Provo.
Gonzalez jokes that he had to go to "smelling school" to hone his skills, but admittedly, super sniffing requires no specialized training, relying solely upon human beings' innate sense of smell.
"The only training we got was could we all go out and identify different odors," Holmes said.
Distinguishing between the five primary odors affecting Provo is quite simple, the investigators said.
Provo's water sewage treatment plant, according to Holmes, has "a little bit of the rotten egg smell."
Gonzalez grimly describes Kuhni's, allegedly the worst smell in Provo, as "a burnt, fleshy smell."
"You can almost taste it, it gets so bad," he said.
Holmes characterizes the Kuhni anti-fragrance as "rotten dog food."
But under the city's odor ordinance, Kuhni's is only in violation if its smell is at or below a level deemed as "unreasonably offensive or noxious to a reasonable person." So, says Holmes, merely detecting a mild odor is not sufficient for issuing a citation.
Not surprisingly, this "reasonable person" standard faces criticism.
Bruce Baird, attorney for Kuhni's, has argued that smell -- like a person's taste in music or clothing -- is subjective, varying from person to person. What one person finds repulsive, Baird reasoned, another may not find offensive.
Super sniffers and City Attorney Gary McGinn don't deny that smell is prone to personal preferences but steadfastly maintain that the "reasonable-person" standard is nevertheless fair and as objective as possible.
"We think we're pretty reasonable here," McGinn said. "My wife thinks I'm pretty reasonable. Dixon (Holmes) is the most reasonable person I know.
"I can't think of a better person than Dixon to go out and routinely smell Kuhni's."